Against (re)Baptizing Converts

A cogent argument against the practice of receiving Roman Catholic and Trinitarian Protestant converts by baptism. I have been and remain ambivalent on this subject and am happy to defer to whatever my bishop says. 

P.S. See also this. 

Priest Photographed Giving Last Rites at Traffic Crash

A picture of a lone priest walking along Highway 81 piqued the interest of thousands of Catholics this week.

Drenched with so much rain, the image appears as a Norman Rockwell work of art; the black of his cassock, heavy with water, could be streaks of oil paint. The priest, now identified as Father John Killackey, was stuck in a line of cars along the highway after six vehicles were involved in a crash on Interstate 81 South in East Hanover Township in Lebanon, Pennsylvania on July 8, 2020.

Traffic apparently had come to a stop due to heavy rain. One car, not noticing the stand-still traffic, ran into the stream of cars and the driver was seriously injured. Father Killackey went to work, walking between the cars and semi-trucks, offering help to those suffering. Father Killackey was able to administer last rites to one person, just before the driver died.

We now have learned quite a bit about Father Killackey. A native of Wayne, N.J., he just celebrated his first-year anniversary of entering the priesthood. Serving as assistant priest at the Mater Dei Community in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he is a member of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter.

Read the rest here.

Anglican orders not 'invalid' says Cardinal, opening way for revision of current Catholic position

One of the Vatican’s top legal minds has opened the way for a revision of the Catholic position on Anglican orders by stressing they should not be written off as “invalid.”  

In a recently published book, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, calls into question Pope Leo XIII’s 1896 papal bull that Anglican orders are “absolutely null and utterly void.”

“When someone is ordained in the Anglican Church and becomes a parish priest in a community, we cannot say that nothing has happened, that everything is ‘invalid’,” the cardinal says in volume of papers and discussions that took place in Rome as part of the “Malines Conversations,” an ecumenical forum. 

“This about the life of a person and what he has given …these things are so very relevant!” 

For decades Leo XIII’s remarks have proved to be one of the major stumbling blocks in Catholic-Anglican unity efforts, as it seemed to offer very little room for interpretation or revision. 

But the cardinal, whose department is charged with interpreting and revising Church laws, argued the Church today has a  “a very rigid understanding of validity and invalidity” which could be revised on the Anglican ordination question. 

“The question of validity [regarding the non-recognition of Anglican orders, while the Pope would give pectoral crosses, rings or chalices to Anglican clergy], however, is not a matter of law but of doctrine,” he explains in a question and answer format. “We have had, and we still have a very rigid understanding of validity and invalidity: this is valid, and that is not valid. One should be able to say: ‘this is valid in a certain context, and that is valid another context’.”

Read the rest here. 

Ummm... sorry. They are invalid and we (Orthodox) need to cease accepting their baptisms. The CofE and their North American constituencies are simply pagan. That Rome does not seem to grasp this is alarming further evidence of the crisis in their own communion.

On the Sacramental Nature of Marriage

One of the obvious differences between the Orthodox and Western understanding of marriage is that in the West, marriage is what two people do, while in the East, it is something that is done to them. This difference is expressed in the wedding service. In the West, the two people give a set of vows, thus entering into a contract with each other. In the Orthodox service, no vows are exchanged; after the initial inquiry as to whether they want to be married to each other (more on that later), they say absolutely nothing. They also do nothing: something is done to them—crowns are placed on their heads, they are led by the priest around the gospel stand, the common cup is given to them, even their wedding rings are placed on their fingers by other people. Whatever the historical development of the Orthodox rite may have been, its form points to the belief in the sacramental nature of marriage. In this way, the rite of marriage similar to the Eucharist. One does not produce the Body and Blood of Christ the way that one would negotiate and produce a contract. All of the actions of the priest and the congregation are not aimed at the production of the Gifts, but at preparing their own hearts and souls for receiving the sacrament.

But when we speak of the sacramental nature of marriage, I think that we have mean some specific thing. Marriage is not a sacrament because it is listed as such in the catechism; and it is not a sacrament because God blesses the couple in some general way. One of the ways we can define a sacrament to be more precise for the purposes of this study is to look at it as transformation: it is not quantitative (whereby vows, blessings, certificates, etc. are added to the couple) but qualitative—the couple does not remain the same two people they were before the weddings but is transformed (“changing them by Your Holy Spirit” in the Eucharistic sense) into something they were not–a specific icon of Christ and His Church.

Just saying this, however, does not make it so. Many—if not most!—of our Orthodox marriages do not resemble the icon of Christ and look very similar to whatever model of marriage that our current society presents. If our theology is not having any practical effect in the actual marriages, then we must strive harder to make theology relevant to the lives of Orthodox spouses. The sacramental nature of an Orthodox marriage and the real presence of God as the third Person in the “trinity” of God, man and woman, needs to be made real in order to help move toward the sacramental transformation of the spouses. 

Read the rest here.

Russian Orthodox Church on the Discipline for Receiving Holy Communion

On February 3 2015 (NS) the Holy Synod approved the below linked document which lays out the current discipline for the reception of the Holy Mysteries of the Altar by the lay faithful. The executive summary is that it cautiously encourages the faithful to commune more frequently than the old custom of once or twice a year, while reiterating the necessity of approaching the chalice with great reverence. This means observing the pre-communion fasts, recent confession and prayerful participation in the services of the church. Details of which may be found in the document

To many the discipline described in the document may seem somewhat strict and it may not fully reflect the practice in their own parish, diocese or jurisdiction. Your mileage will vary. The final authority on participation in the Holy Sacraments is your spiritual father (confessor) under the authority of your bishop.

The document may be read here.
HT: An anonymous blog reader

FOUNTAIN OF IMMORTALITY - Meditation on the Orthodox Divine Liturgy

Roman Catholic Church may reconsider sacraments for divorced and remarried

Just a few days after the publication of Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium”, Archbishop Baldisseri, Secretary General of the Synod, has confirmed the issue remains open: “We will discuss it without any taboos. The Orthodox experience could be of help to us”

“A new approach needs to be taken with respect to the administration of the sacraments to remarried divorcees.” Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri is the prelate the Pope nominated Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops. Born in 1940, the Tuscan prelate has four decades of experience as a member of the Vatican diplomatic corps and as of the end of September he has had the task of renewing the Synod institute that will meet twice – in 2014 and 2015 – to discuss the family, after a questionnaire or consultation containing 39 questions on family issues.

In the “Evangelii Gaudium” Francis does not explicitly mention the issue of the administration of sacraments to remarried divorcees. However, he does write that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” How should these words be read?

“We should pay attention to the phrase that follows immediately after this: These convictions have pastoral consequences that we are called to consider with prudence and boldness.” The Pope presents these two elements together. This means he wants these issues to be examined with prudence and therefore with attention to the Church’s doctrine. But he also wants them to be examined with boldness, which for me means “without fear”, taking individual circumstances into account.”

Read the rest here.

Metropolitan Hilarion’s new book “Rites of the Orthodox Church” is released

Published is the book “Rites of the Orthodox Church” by Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk. It is a new joint project of the Publishing House of the Moscow Patriarchate and the EKSMO Publishing House.

The book tells about the sacraments and rites of the Orthodox Church. What is consecration and transfiguration? What do the Sacrament of Matrimony and taking the veil have in common? What should one know about a burial service and prayers for the dead? How are water and different objects being blessed? In this book, one will find answers to these and many other questions.

The author writes about all rites of the Church, dwelling upon the main ones: taking the veil, burial service, and about blessing of water, consecration of a church, blessing of the Holy Chrism, prayer services on various occasions.

The book is recommended by the Publishing House of the Moscow Patriarchate and addressed to the reading public, both faithful and those who are going to cross the Church’s threshold.

Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Volokolamsk is the chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, chairman of the Synodal Biblical Commission, rector of the Sts Cyril and Methodius Post-Graduate and Doctoral School of the Moscow Patriarchate, Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Oxford, and Doctor of Divinity of the St Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris.

Metropolitan Hilarion is the author of over 30 books on theology and church history, which were translated into several languages and republished many times. He is also the author of many musical compositions for choir and symphony orchestra.

Source.

Not sure if or when an English version will be out.

Baptism is not magic

Right matter + right formula does not = sacrament.  See the excellent post at Energetic Procession.

Met. Saba (Esber) on Preparing for Communion

Some Words about Going up to Receive

Forty years ago, the predominate custom was for the faithful to go forward to partake of mystery of the Eucharist infrequently, since the predominate understanding said that one should only partake of the Eucharist a few times each year, such as on major feasts... In my childhood, I would hear the grown-ups say that the maximum permissible number of times that the faithful could partake of the holy things was once every forty days, while following a number of requirements.

They based this on man's being unworthy of this dreadful mystery. Without a doubt, for them this conviction stemmed from great honor given to the divine mystery and a realization of their own sins, which required the faithful to prepare with total sincerity in order to partake of the holy mystery. Since the faithful were not able to undertake this preparation continually, they refrained from approaching the holy chalice rather than approaching without having prepared as they should.

I remember that my grandmother would bathe on the Sunday in which she would receive the holy things, after having visited the homes of all her neighbors, asking their forgiveness if she had sinned against them. I likewise know a very faithful man who is not absent from the Divine Liturgy unless he is extremely ill and bedridden. He did not go up to partake at all during the time he practiced his career. His argument was that his job required him to lie constantly, since he worked in real estate. He was convinced that he was unworthy as long as he was going to go back and lie the next day.

Read the rest here.

This is a very good read.  Many thanks to Samn! for translating this from the Arabic.

Ecumenism III: There are no sacraments outside the Church

...I believe the Church is the Body of Christ: one, visible and undivided. It is visible and undivided, not invisible and undivided, that’s a Protestant notion that saves anyone having to say hard things and hurt anyone else’s feelings; it is the result of a mechanistic, lowest common denominator Christianity that reduces belief to a handful of very weak statements and says everything else is optional. I don’t believe in the branch theory and I don’t believe in two lungs (again you need the ‘real’ church to be invisible for this) because if Christ was one physically visible, recognisable person then His Church must be the same. If not a single bone of His body was broken, not even in death, then it makes no sense to say that His body is broken now. As my spiritual father says: It is not true that we cannot know where the Church is not. ‘The Church’ is not beyond the boundaries of the Orthodox Church. What we cannot know is how an individual outside the church relates to it.

Read the rest here.

Caution: This is not an ecumenical warm and fuzzy post. But it is pretty much on target.

My own view: I remain agnostic on the subject of Roman Catholic sacraments, but Protestants are pretty much beyond any reasonable connection to the Church. Here in N. America (as opposed to the majority of the established Orthodox churches) there is quite a bit of vocal support for recognizing RC sacraments most of which seems to at least implicitly involve accepting Augustine's understanding of the dualistic nature of the Church which has never been accepted by the Orthodox. My problem is that this is very hard to square with the historic teaching of the Church especially given the self understanding of both the Roman Church and the Orthodox. Both claim unequivocally that they are The Church spoken of in the Creed. And they hold the fullness of the faith. Now given that Rome has dogmatized quite a few things that we Orthodox are not on-board with this creates some serious issues.

Either Rome is right, in which case we Orthodox are at least schismatics and arguably heretics, or Rome is wrong. In which case they have been adding to the Deposit of the Faith and are teaching heresy. You can put all the feel good lipstick you want on this pig, but there it is. If we accept Rome's (and Augustine's) understanding of the nature of the Church and the sacraments we have taken a very large step towards admitting Rome is right. That's all well and fine if you believe that. But it is a position that I believe gravely undermines the claims of the Orthodox Church. It is also inconsistent with the more or less unanimously held opinion of every Orthodox saint over the last five centuries or so who has bothered to comment on the subject.

And yes, in Orthodoxy that's a problem.

Some Catholics mull restoring Confirmation (Chrismation) to before Communion

This via Fr. Z.

Archbishop puts Confirmation before Communion

By David V Barrett

From next year children in the Archdiocese of Liverpool will be confirmed before receiving their First Communion, reversing the usual order of sacraments in the Catholic Church.

A leaflet being sent to all parishes in the archdiocese next week explains the changes. It says:?“These three sacraments make up the process of belonging to the Church (called Christian Initiation). The sacraments weren’t always in that order, and adults preparing for initiation have always received them in the original order: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist (Communion).”

From September 2012 children in the archdiocese who have been baptised will follow this order.

Read the rest here.

What surprises me is that the response from these mostly Trad or Trad sympathetic Catholics has been generally positive based on the comments at Fr. Z's site.